Citrini Research Scenario Sparks Market Sell-Off and Revives Fears of a 2028 AI Crisis
citrini research's viral Substack post — billed by its author as a “scenario, not a prediction” — has rattled investors by laying out a chain of events that would hollow out consumer demand and lift unemployment above 10% by June 2028. The memo’s circulation coincided with a one-day drop in the S&P of more than 1% and heavy losses for several companies named in the note.
Citrini Research memo and June 2028 timeline
The little-known US analysis firm presented what it calls a postmortem dispatch written from June 2028 that traces a “global intelligence crisis. ” The scenario begins now and runs to June 2028, ending with US unemployment cresting over 10% and an Occupy Silicon Valley movement setting up camp outside OpenAI and Anthropic’s offices. The memo frames the crisis as rooted in the displacement of human intelligence — the scarce input Citrini dubs “friction” — and describes an economic collapse driven by aggressive AI adoption.
Market moves: S&P, Uber, Mastercard and American Express
The publication unnerved investors: the S&P fell more than 1% on Monday, and the software component of the index slid to its lowest level since the president’s so-called “liberation day” tariff announcement in April. Traders also weighed the impact of the latest tariffs, but the memo named specific casualties: Uber, DoorDash, Mastercard and American Express. Those companies lost between 4% and 6% over the week after the post circulated.
Mechanism: AI agents, Claude Code and Codex
The scenario opens with a sudden “jump in capability” for autonomous AI systems, or agents. Citrini points to Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex as examples of recent breakthroughs that have already impressed users. In the scenario, those agents allow businesses to perform tasks such as managing databases and organising workflows in-house, undercutting software-as-a-service providers and forcing incumbents like Oracle into what Citrini calls a “race to the bottom” on pricing.
Business disruption: Monday. com, Zapier, Asana, travel agents and payments
Citrini lays out how the agents damage firms that monetise friction. It names Monday. com, Zapier and Asana as vulnerable because agents can perform the same back-office tasks more cheaply. Travel and estate agencies, described as middlemen in booking holidays or buying property, are sidelined if every consumer uses a personal agent to transact. Developers and consumers, the memo suggests, would even build bespoke food-delivery apps rather than use DoorDash, fragmenting markets and destroying legacy margins. The scenario also forecasts agents choosing cheaper cryptocurrency rails over Visa and Mastercard for transactions, a shift that would gut traditional payment providers.
Ghost GDP, layoffs and the “negative feedback loop with no natural brake”
Citrini frames a key concept as “ghost GDP”: economic activity generated by machines that inflates national accounts but does not circulate through the real economy because, in the firm’s words, machines spend zero dollars on discretionary goods. The memo warns that companies adopting AI to defend margins will lay off white-collar workers, shrinking consumer spending and prompting more AI-driven cost cuts — a negative feedback loop with no natural brake. What makes this notable is that the scenario treats the loss of human intelligence as a systemic shock, not merely job churn.
Author background and reception: James Van Geelen, portfolio gains and analyst reaction
James Van Geelen, the Substack writer who put the scenario forward, is identified as the founder of Citrini Research and as its top finance writer. He is a former Los Angeles paramedic with degrees in biology and psychology who built a reputation on what the memo calls “second-order thinking. ” Van Geelen has said his real-world investment portfolio surged more than 200% since May 2023, and he told Demetri Kofinas of the Hidden Forces podcast in April 2025 that a “sword of Damocles” hung over white-collar employees. Van Geelen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The memo attracted sharp reactions in market commentary. Neil Wilson, an analyst at Saxo Capital Markets, described the piece as “real doomsday porn stuff” and a wake-up call that the economy no longer resembles the one of a few years ago. Citrini’s post argues that habitual app loyalty no longer binds machines — “the entire basis of the business model, simply didn’t exist for a machine, ” it writes — and that the displacement of human intelligence will ripple through private credit, mortgages and consumer demand.
citrini research’s scenario is explicit about its speculative nature, yet it bundles concrete triggers, named companies and a fixed timeline that have already coincided with measurable market moves. The broader implication is that even thought exercises can reshape investor behaviour when they present a coherent chain of cause and effect tied to recent technological advances.
